Banging up an orchestra

Graeme Leak is standing in a suburban garage surrounded by piles of junk.

Battered tins that once contained kerosene and maple syrup, a copper dam float picked up in outback Queensland, broken shop dummies, an old kitchen sink. Graeme doesn't regard these objects as junk though; he collects them because they make noise when he beats, bangs and slaps them. They're the perfect instruments for his Noise Orchestra.

Leak credits his inspiration for the orchestra to early 20th century Italian futurists.

"These guys really celebrated the sound of machinery and wanted to bring [it] in to the concert hall and into art," he explains.

The founder of the Futurist movement Filippo Marinetti created an "orchestra" of big wooden boxes with horns attached and stretched wires inside. Leak says they haven't survived, but it's believed that outside handles on the boxes turned wheels that rubbed bits of rosin on the wires "and they screeched and yelled and made horrible sounds".

"[The Futurists] used to do concerts in concert halls and the establishment musicians and artists would come and sit in the audience and boo," he says. "And so the boys used to get off stage and go out into the audience and have a fight, and there were riots. So there was noise on stage and fights in the aisles."

Thankfully Leak's version of the Noise Orchestra doesn't include riots and fights but it does feature riotous rhythms. Leak is a professional musician and composer who studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He has a passion for percussion which he believes is a "community instrument" and looks to the music of Africa which, he says, is comprised of generally simple parts."

"It's the way all of those parts fit together to become the groove or to complete the jigsaw puzzle that is where the interest lies," Leak says. "To me that's the essence of community music making."

Leak also enjoys working with people who've never played music before.

"I love giving people an opportunity to be part of an ensemble and to just get a taste of what it feels like to be producing music and working together...even just for one afternoon or a few hours."

Birthday Bash

For a few hours on Monday 11 March the Noise Orchestra will be part of Canberra's 100th birthday celebrations. Leak is running a series of workshops, open to the public, which will culminate in a parade and what he describes as "a special moment" also featuring a combined brass band, a didgeridoo and a soprano.

That event is still hush-hush - but is expected to be one of the highlights of a day of activities and spectacle around Lake Burley Griffin. Leak is also co-ordinating the musicians on boats, who'll float around the lake, performing for the crowds.

His other projects include Listen to My Kitchen, a show he played over ten years to 150-thousand school children. He also constructed the Musical Fence instllation at Winton, used by the Grammy-award winning Gotye in his song Eyes Wide Open.

Leak says the famous fence is now a tourist attraction maintained by the local council.

"Busloads visit it every day," he says, proudly. "Whenever I'm there doing any work, which is only every few years, a constant stream of cars and buses are dropping in. And I think some of the locals play it too but they do it in secret."

As he cuts broomsticks into clap sticks and shows off the plastic grass catcher he's turning into a drum, Leak explains why he's so fond of his grubby bits of metal, wood and plastic.

"To me the whole beauty of the junk is that it's not perfect and that it's got all these random overtones that I find quite beautiful," he smiles.

Information on how to join the Noise Orchestra will be on the Canberra Centenary website soon.